Moonlight's Embrace
by Kled
Summary: It had been just under a year since Kubo defeated the Moon King and brought his grand story to an end. But as the cold winter sets in over the land, not all proves to be well for the young hero. The remaining Sister; one of Kubo's aunts, had survived the fight that he thought had claimed her life. Acting on her father's final wish, she comes for her nephew and vows to take his eye.


The white porcelain mask lied on the floor of the debris-strewn fortress courtyard, broken from the battle that had taken place many hours before. Night had turned to day, and day soon turned back to night. The moon, full and great in its form, floated in the sky above, illuminating the carnage before it. Its silvery sheen reflected off of the mask, giving it an eerie glow that settled over the scarred place.

As soon as the night had fallen over the land, one of the piles of rubble began to stir. Planks of splintered wood and rent shards of broken stone began to fall from it until a heavily damaged and beaten shape emerged from it, which started to move slowly from the pile with a ragged and greatly-needed gasp for air.

The thin female figure, clad in dark armor and a torn black cape of raven feathers, began to stumble and limp forward. Long, jet-black hair hung from her head like silky drapes, swaying in the soft wind. While one of her arms, tipped with a bare and bony hand was low and clutching at a wound marked with dry ichor on her side, the other one, covered by a gloved gauntlet, had its talon-like fingers stretched over her face in a muddled manner. Only her bare left hand and the parts of her face that weren't covered by the other hand exposed her skin, revealing that it bore a deathly pallor to its tone.

She was the last of the two Sisters. Where she tried to walk toward was her mask; the object having been separated from her in the battle that took place not a day before which ultimately resulted in her deep, but miraculously nonfatal injuries. Briefly taking her arms off of her body and leaning down after approaching her possession, the Sister grabbed her mask in both hands and picked it up. Placing what was left of it over her pale, white face, she turned to the only other two objects to catch her eyes amidst the shattered floor of this old fortress.

One was a large and wide-shouldered body, bearing the chitinous features of both man and beetle, laying face-down. It was the great, cursed warrior Beetle, whom the Sister had killed, otherwise known by his true, but forgotten identity as the samurai Hanzo. He was the one to inflict the wretched wound on her side with a sword he had flung at her while her focus was trained elsewhere. What laid close to him were the two bisected pieces of a wooden monkey charm she had also cut down, which was once a living, flesh-and-blood form possessed by the spirit of her and her twin sister's eldest sibling-turned traitor and mortal, Sariatu.

The Sister looked down at the broken monkey charm in a forlorn way. She killed her without remorse in her actions then, but always had she loved and looked up to her eldest sister all the same, even somewhat after she had fallen in love with Hanzo and bore his child. Kneeling down, she gently picked up the charm and after the two pieces were safely in her careful hands, she turned to Hanzo's prone and lifeless form with an angered scowl behind her broken mask and teeth gritted over her dark lips.

" _You_ made me do this to her. _You_ took her from me. Vile, wicked insect!"

With her rasp, she scuffed her boot quickly against the stone floor, kicking a small cloud of dust and a few bits of debris at Hanzo's unmoving body. It was a final act of hate and malice toward the one she had earlier slain, having run her blade through his back while it was turned. Either way, she knew her spite towards his carcass didn't truly matter. He was dead; his spirit long gone and departed for whatever afterlife awaited him, leaving nothing but an empty shell for her to vent her frustration out upon. Sighing, she looked back to the pieces of the idol in her hands and stared long and hard at them, the snarl on her lips lessening until it was gone completely. Walking back, she took a seat atop a stable piece of flat wreckage that was torn up in the scuffle and caught her breath as she looked down to the broken object.

She soon turned her mask face upward and looked around until she spotted what her roving eyes searched for, which to say was the small bits of her pipe. A magical thing possessing the essence of a fire demon she had slain ages prior, it had been broken to pieces by her nephew Kubo as she was mere seconds from plucking his last eye out and releasing him from his wretched mortal coils. Placing the monkey charm's two halves into a pocket on her person, she stretched her gloved hand out to the enchanted pipe, and on her command the many parts began to fly her way on their own, as if a powerful, unseen force was carrying them. The pipe's remains came to her and as they floated over her palm, the shattered pieces slowly began to rearrange themselves and stick together until the object was fixed and whole again. When it was finished, it looked like there hadn't been any damage sustained in the first place.

Without further delay she lit it and placed the tip in her mouth, inhaling some of its plant-based content's easing essence. As she exhaled a fragile breath, a black cloud of smoke exited her pallid mouth like a dark, ghostly wisp. The fume swirled up into the sky as though it had a life of its own, before fading away with a gust of wind. It was the only thing she had to soothe herself now, in this fragile moment. Once she recovered just enough, the Sister planned on returning to her father, the Moon King. She had to inform him of her failure to defeat Kubo, and where the boy was surely headed now.

That plan never came to pass though, as a sudden burst of agony then gripped her head, causing her to drop her pipe to the side in surprise. She cried out in a sharp hiss as it clinked upon where it touched down, her crown bending forward in a sudden motion, hands shooting to it in a vain effort to quell the tide of torment.

The pain wracked her mind like nothing she had ever felt since the death of her beloved other sibling. She could not describe what was causing it for a short time, but when she did, her mouth hung agape with pure shock. It was a disappearance of someone she could sense through the cosmos. One of the few she cared for in her immortal life. And when it dawned on her to who it was, she let out a scream that rang throughout the fortress and the surrounding countryside.

The Moon King was gone.

Raiden was gone.

 _Father was gone._

She knew not how this was so, but it was _true_. Her despairing wail dying down into a low cry, and then a hushed gasp, the Sister fell to her weak and trembling knees, pained echoes still surrounding her. The emptiness that had touched her soul in that instant was the worst tormenting anguish she had ever experienced. Far more terrible than the wound given to her by Hanzo's thrown sword in that savage battle. Far more burning and foul than Sariatu's betrayal years prior.

As she regained control of her thoughts and actions many minutes later, she came to a despondent conclusion on what her next move would be. She knew what she needed to do now, before anything else. The idea consumed her mind with the frigid logic she had been trained to heed in times so dire as this, and she acted on it with an audible gritting of her white teeth.

She needed to heal. To regain her full strength so that she could fulfill her father's final given wish. Snatching her pipe up and putting it away, then getting to her sore legs with a deep breath, the Sister began to focus. Calling upon her power, what little of it she was able to muster, she steadily began to levitate above the ground. Looking to the sky, to the moon that filled the dark abyss of stars and endless blackness, she began to fly toward it. Eventually she picked up speed until she was going at a pace no mortal could witness, and she disappeared entirely into the silver-white glow of the great celestial object.


End file.
